Try, Try Again
by SubRosa7
Summary: It took nine tries, but Albion finally lasted longer than three years. Well, really, ten tries.


Title: Try, Try Again (the once and future King)

Summary: It took nine tries, but Albion finally lasted longer than three years. Well, really, ten tries.

A/N: I haven't seen the final two episodes of the season yet, and I haven't read any spoilers about them. I'm sure that this is already AU, but I thought it might be one way things worked out. The idea seized my imagination, so I wanted to finish it before learning what 'really' happened.

Try, Try Again

**1. The End and the Beginning **

Arthur died on the field of Camlann. Merlin screamed, and learned in that moment of agony that he could control time. Not just slow it, as he had done since he was a child. Merlin could reverse time. So he did.

**Chapter 2: Reverse, Rewind, Second Time **

It was strange, so terribly strange, to wander into Camelot that first day. Merlin wasn't the young, energetic, and above all, idealistic, youth whom he had once been when first he entered Gaius's chambers. But enter them again he did. He saved Gaius, he explained who he was and what he'd done, and he tried not to be hurt at the look of awe bordering on fear in Gaius's kind eyes.

He went to the courtyard, and interrupted Arthur's bullying of the poor man carrying the shield.

"I think that he's had enough," Merlin said again, but instead of "friend," he addressed Arthur as "Sir Knight."

He still got a similar response from Arthur. Who did Merlin think he was, etc. etc. But the Prince was not as outraged. Merlin knew Arthur, and Merlin knew that Arthur secretly liked being mistaken for any other knight.

And that Arthur admired bravery, even when it came close to idiocy.

"I'll hold that shield for you, then, your Highness." Merlin offered, "I bet that I can give you a more challenging target." And after years as Arthur's manservant, Merlin most certainly could. Arthur hired him on the spot to work with the knights of Camelot as a target and general dogsbody.

That night, Merlin once again saved Arthur's life from the sorceress. Uther once again appointed Merlin to the honor of serving as Arthur's manservant. Arthur wasn't thrilled with the prospect, but at least he knew that Merlin was an ace at putting armor on and taking a hit. Merlin, meanwhile, was both relieved to have everything going according to plan, overjoyed to have another chance to keep this living Arthur alive, and at the same time incredibly homesick, or rather time-sick. This young Arthur was a good man, under all of the prattishness. But he wasn't the Arthur Merlin knew and loved like a brother. At least not yet, and he would never again be older than Merlin. Merlin thought that he could live with that, as long as Arthur lived. After all, Arthur had only ever been older than he, never wiser.

Merlin learned things, the second time he stood by Arthur's side.

1: The Great Dragon was still just as annoyingly vague.

2: Often, there were no perfect choices, just different bad ones. Even when you did know how the future might play out.

3: An important one. Merlin could not kill a child in cold blood, or leave one to die. Mordred safely escaped with Morgana that first night he was healthy enough to run, Merlin saw to that. Morgana returned to her chamber in time to dress for breakfast, and Merlin hoped that maybe, maybe, this time she would not become his embittered enemy. That he could at least keep his own part in her pain to a minimum. Because this wasn't Merlin's Morgana, not anymore. And this Morgana, and even that Morgana in her early days, had been a friend well worth fighting for, and even dying for.

4. There didn't seem to be any harm in letting Arthur think that Merlin was hopelessly in love with Morgana. Merlin was more mature this time around, and when he accepted the lie with a feigned blush and solemnly promised never to do anything in appropriate, Arthur believed him.

5. That sometimes one has to let painful realizations play out, because since Morgana had never been caught escaping with Mordred, Arthur was never made aware of the situation. He didn't save Mordred, so when one druid camp broke tradition to put a price on Arthur's head, Iseldir and Mordred had no reason to argue against that course of action.

Merlin was de-leeching Gaius's leech tank, when Arthur was knifed down in the hallway by a simple assassin.

**Chapter 3: ****Third Time's a Charm. Or Not. **

The third time which Merlin shepherded Arthur through the events at the end of Uther's reign, his quiet but much more potently skilled magic attracted the attention of Uther's witch-finder just after the death of Balinor. Merlin was out on patrol with Arthur and several of Camelot's finest for a week. When they returned, it was to find that Aredian the Witch Finder had tortured Gaius nearly to death, along the way finding out that Merlin was the son of Balinor. The Witch-Finder proposed to kill Gaius and Merlin both.

Arthur was angry that Merlin hadn't told him that the strange old Dragon lord was, in fact, Merlin's father. Merlin expected to die. He'd never expected Arthur to die for him.

**Chapter 4: Fourth through Ninth: **

The fourth time around, Merlin learned that he had Balinor issues. It was difficult to routinely get the dragon lord to come to Camelot in time to stop Kilgharrah's rampage. Once, when Balinor did not arrive, Merlin decided that he might as well give Kilgharrah a chance to incinerate him - why not, after all, Kilgharrah had caused him enough grief over the years? Kilgharrah declined to kill Merlin but decided that Sir Leon would look better en flambe. Merlin objected, in dragon tongue. Which shocked Merlin and Kilgharrah both, and resulted in a series of long discussions with Kilgharrah which started with, "why didn't you tell me you had lived this before," and ended with the working theory that since Merlin had already BECOME a dragon lord at some point in a different past, that he still was a dragon lord, in any time.

Then Gwaine was a shade too slow in the melee, and Arthur died anyway. Merlin's healing magic had gotten better, but Uther wouldn't leave his son's side, and Merlin dying on a pyre wouldn't do anybody any good.

The fifth time Merlin lived through Arthur's adolescence, he was feeling fairly protective of Arthur. So, he learned that he needed to let Arthur do things on his own, otherwise Arthur would sneak off without Merlin's help instead of with it, and get killed. Protecting Arthur was such a thankless job.

The sixth time, Morgana accidentally burned down the castle and nearly killed Merlin as well as Arthur and Uther and Gwen and Gaius and everyone else.

The seventh time, Merlin tried to do more of his work protecting Arthur as Emrys. Merlin was revealed while about those good works, and Arthur did not take it well. He might have come around if he'd had time, but he went on patrol without Merlin whilst trying to cool down, and Morgana killed him.

The eighth time, Merlin set off to rescue Aithusa (and Morgana, because the two were not a separable issue) from the Sarrum. Everything had been going decently well up until then, but Merlin was unfortunately captured and kept with Morgana and his dragonling. Their dragonling. It was a very odd, uncomfortable situation (in more ways than one). Between the two of them, Merlin and Morgana figured out a way to escape within a week, but by then it was too late. Arthur had been killed in a skirmish with King Lot's mercenaries.

The ninth time, Merlin finally realized that what Kilgharrah had been trying to tell him about the Caillieach. The moment came again, when the old woman refused to accept his sacrifice. But Merlin didn't really need for her too. The Dorocha had taken enough lives, and not all of those spirits had moved on. Merlin used their weight to close the veil himself. The Caillieach wasn't overly pleased with him, but then they were probably never going to become mates.

So, Lancelot lived. That changed a lot. It gave Merlin someone to cover for him, whenever he needed to use his magic. Morgana still tried to enchant Lancelot to seduce Gwen, but Merlin caught that one in time. It was fairly obvious when Lancelot STOPPED covering for him, after all.

Lancelot was there to help Merlin stop Julius Borden, and he was even able to convince Merlin (and Kilgharrah) to take the dragon's egg to the Crystal Cave, and leave it there to sleep until the world was safer for young, impressionable dragons.

Most important of all, perhaps, was that Lancelot was there to tell Arthur about Merlin's magic when Merlin nearly died, and he needed to use it to save himself. Arthur ordered his manservant to do whatever was necessary, and after about a week of not talking to either Lancelot or Merlin, Arthur came around. It was a blessed relief.

They made it further, that time. Arthur's reign lasted all of five years, before Lancelot's arrow ended the life of Mordred's love Kara, and Mordred swore vengeance and later came after the too-trusting Arthur. If the best of everything - intentions, luck - had only gotten them two more years, than Merlin decided that it might be time to try something completely different.

**Chapter 5: Something Completely Different **

The tenth time, Merlin told Kilgharrah everything, at the beginning. And then, six weeks after he came to Camelot, Merlin let the dragon loose. He didn't need Kilgharrah's guidance, and being a dragon lord himself, his will kept the dragon from wreaking havoc.

Uther still knew that Kilgharrah had escaped, and swore vengeance for it. But he didn't connect Gaius's slightly slow assistant with the mighty dragon's escape.

When the time came that Morgana's magic could no longer be hidden from her, Merlin decided that he was tired of seeing her desperate and scared. The Great Dragon wasn't there to disapprove, and Merlin was old enough to stand up to Gaius, so he just told Morgana. Not everything, and not the whole truth, but enough to prove to her that he knew she had magic, and that he wanted to help her.

Fortunately for all concerned, Arthur had been particularly un-prat-like of late. Merlin took Morgana to Arthur, and held her hand while she pleaded for her brother's help. It cost Morgana to beg for anything from anybody, and it was in part that which convinced Arthur that his sister was serious. He would never willingly condemn anybody to the pyre, Merlin's King. He'd ordered hangings and beheadings for proven murderers, but Arthur had never sent anyone to burn, and Merlin's bet that no Arthur ever would do so, particularly not to his own sister, proved a good one.

Arthur and Morgana convinced Uther that Morgana needed a chance to visit her mother's kin in the faraway summerlands, where magic was not a crime. Morgana went there and learned in that magical tradition. It was there that she met Morgause, and there that she wed a foreign prince. Later in life she would still become Uther's and Arthur's sworn enemy, after Uther had Morgana's lover burned at the stake and Arthur couldn't stop it. But Morgana's thirst for revenge against Arthur himself did not burn so hot nor so fast, and that would be important, later on.

Agravaine and Morgana still succeeded in poisoning Uther before Merlin could unmask Agravaine. So out came Dragoon, but Merlin had learned enough, in the interim, to only ask Arthur to remember, as his price, that not all sorcery was used for wicked ends. Since Merlin fully knew by then that Arthur could connect one and two for three if the steps were clearly explained to him, he went ahead and told the Prince that he'd only planted the poultice under Arthur's pillow to save Gwen's life, and that the first, betraying poultice had been placed by an agent of Morgana's.

Apparently, Merlin - or rather, 'Dragoon' - had come off as so 'nice' that Arthur doubted whether he was really a sorcerer who could help Arthur. Which led to the two of them going off to find an old, arthritic sheep for 'Dragoon' to heal, in order to prove how powerful he was.

Merlin learned that day that even an old, mostly blind sheep who had survived a stroke was surprising fast and agile.

"Here, sheep." Merlin tried to coax, wishing for the first time that his dragonlord powers would extend to farmyard animals. "Here, sheep. Ba, ba, ba."

"Ba ba ba?" Arthur mocked, in that particularly supercilious royal tone of his which just dripped 'you're an idiot.'

Merlin was tired of solving all of Arthur's problems by himself. "Do you have a better idea?" He asked the Prince.

It turned out that Arthur didn't, so they spent a-never-to-be-spoken-of-again few hours chasing a mostly-blind sheep. Merlin-as-Dragoon quickly proved that he could heal the cataracts, and the stroke symptoms, but not make the sheep young again. Although Merlin himself effectively seemed to have stopped aging sometime in his early twenties, he'd never learned how to make anyone else become younger. And it was a pity, too, because Merlin would have done it for Gaius in a heartbeat, to help his foster-father with his aching knees.

Gaius, with Gwen's unwitting help, successfully removed the amulet from Uther's neck in time. Merlin healed Uther, but the healing drained him so badly that he lost his form as Dragoon. Arthur stared at the fading gold in Merlin's eyes. Uther ordered his son's man-servant burned at the stake.

Merlin thought at that moment that his life was over, but Arthur somehow managed to convince his father that Merlin's using magic had all been a fever dream of Uther's.

"How long?" Arthur demanded, stone-faced with anger, once they were back in his own chambers.

"Always." Stuttered Merlin, who had never actually had to explain this face-to-face to a conscious Arthur without Lancelot's help before. "Since always. Since I was born."

Arthur glared, and paced, and muttered to himself, while Merlin stood there, waiting for the axe to fall (quite literally). Finally, Arthur nodded determinedly.

"Right. You're not to use your magic in Camelot, ever again, without my permission. Not while my father lives."

Merlin hesitated. "And after?"

Arthur wavered for a moment, "After...well, you're my man, aren't you? You'll use your magic for me." Arthur frowned and glared as Merlin slumped in relief. "And really obey me, I mean. No more of this rot that you do now, skipping off and not heeding me. Merlin. Merlin? I mean it, Merlin. You'll tell me when you're going off to summon bunnies or flatten armies, or whatever it is you do in your spare time! Do you hear me, Merlin?"

Uther didn't last out the year. Merlin became Arthur's official court sorcerer and advisor in the spring following his coronation. Morgana tried to kill him the following fall, which made Arthur angry and Merlin feel sort-of special. His relationship with Morgana, he recognized, was really weird.

Camlann still happened, that tenth time, but it happened after Arthur had ruled for nearly thirty years. A generation of peace and prosperity. Arthur had united Albion, established rule of law, and even instituted something in the way of social mobility. It was a great legacy, and Merlin was fairly sure that he could try another ten thousand times and not achieve an outcome as good. It was tempting - it was always tempting - to save Arthur from that fatal blow by reversing time again. But Arthur had asked Merlin not to, and Merlin didn't. Instead he took the dying Arthur to the repentant Morgana, and together they worked with Freya to let him sleep until he was needed again.

'Twas Gwen, after that, who negotiated a future for an Albion without Arthur. Gwen, and Queen Mithian, and the eldest sons of Queen Annis and King Lot. Gwen herself inherited the rule of Camelot from Arthur. After a year of mourning she married Lancelot, and the two of them were blessed with a miracle late-in-life baby. Truly a natural miracle - Merlin was on hand for the birth, but only to provide healing spells and join the knights in gently mocking Lancelot for his virility. In time, Gwen and Lancelot's daughter married the grandson of Leon, and their son married the great-grand-daughter of Gwaine (well, one of them). Gwen's cleverness and tireless dedication and the loyal support of Arthur's knights and allies won Albion another two generations of peace, and even after that Albion's influence lived on. Much like Greece, other civilizations would conquer Albion, but something of Albion remained in the concepts of rule of law, rights of man, knighthood and chivalry. In the hearts and the practices of the people, Merlin would watch Albion fall only to rise again.

That was in time, of course. At first Merlin was too wrecked by Arthur's death to do much of anything. It was Gwen who saved Camelot and Albion, and the credit would always go to her. Merlin was there not long after Camlann to provide magical and emotional support for Gwen and the knights, but he spent much of the next sixty or so years on his own. Merlin STILL wasn't aging, and it was at that point that he first began to fear that he never would. It was hard to see his friends grow old and die, so he spent some of that time with Morgana, who was aging but not naturally. Her magic preserved her, and at seventy she appeared a woman of perhaps only thirty-and-five. Merlin ended up telling Morgana more of his history and his destiny than he had ever told anyone, and it was she who helped him to figure out how he might wake Arthur and heal him, if the time was ever right.

Albion fell, and so did many, many of its conquerors. In time, came Britain. Merlin stayed through all of those centuries, looking out for the descendants of Gwen and Lancelot, Morgana, and the knights. Merlin fought in the trenches of World War I at the side of Gwaine's many-times great-grandson, and considered waking Arthur up. But the gaping wound Mordred had left in Arthur's chest, well, Merlin still didn't quite know how he might heal that. But it was during that war that he first realized that it might be advances in medicine, rather than magic, which would eventually give him a way to do so.

World War I ended. World War II started before Merlin had even finished mourning all of friends' descendants who had died in the previous war. Britain fell, and Hitler won.

Merlin reversed time again for the first time since Arthur's ninth death, and woke Arthur up in 1920. Between magic and medical know-how, it was enough. For several years, Merlin helped Arthur to heal and train in a manor house near the site of the original Camelot. Together, they woke Aithusa, and the two of them rode the dragon on many a desperate mission to hamper Hitler whilst aiding the British and their allies. The rumors of a dragon aiding the allies were particularly unsettling for the Fuhrer, since he believed in magic and considered dragons as properly a symbol of his reign.

"Morgana would have wiped the tables with this guy. He's just flat-out crazy." Arthur observed. Merlin nodded.

Aithusa died during the Battle for Britain, felled by enemy fire. Arthur joined the Royal Air Force under the pseudonym "Arthur King," and Merlin joined Britain's spies in the occupied territories (much to Arthur's irritated chagrin. He'd tried ordering Merlin not to, but that had never really worked).

Merlin was captured, and Arthur took the squadron he'd recently assumed command of several hundred miles off of course to rescue him. Merlin, once he was healed enough to object, took exception.

"You're unaging, you idiot, not immortal. Shut up, and eat your porridge like a good half-wit for Gemma, will you?" Arthur commanded.

Merlin did, but mostly because Gemma, despite being of Indian descent rather than summer islander stock, reminded them both uncomfortably of Guinevere. Her brother, Eric, was a talented amateur mechanic, echoing Elyan with his blacksmith's training. Arthur's second in command was a steady, humorless fellow named Larry. Their squadron also included a former singer called Lance and daredevil George. Merlin joined them, once he was well, as a navigator bombardier. They didn't win the war single-handedly, but at the end they had amassed more awards for valor than any other squadron.

After the war, Arthur was rather afraid that the phrase in the prophecy, "Once and future King," indicated that he would have to conquer something, and he really didn't want to. That is, until Gemma started teasing Arthur about his last name of "King," making a play on words and calling Arthur "the once and future King." Much to Gemma's confusion, that started both Arthur and Merlin into hysterical laughter.

"I think she's right, thank God. I didn't want to conquer anything." Arthur told Merlin later, over drinks.

"You never did conquer anything, you lazy prat. You had it all handed to you." Merlin replied, with a lazy grin.

Arthur spluttered and Merlin laughed again, because they both knew that while Arthur had inherited his kingdom, it had never been easy.

Once the parades were over and the members of Arthur's squadron were well-settled into after-war occupations (which took particularly long in George's case, since he'd developed a drinking problem), Arthur began to brood.

"I should let you put me back to sleep." He confessed to Merlin in anguish. Merlin was silent for long enough to watch Arthur look yearningly at Gemma, who was dancing in the pub with her brother.

"I think that maybe, sometimes, destiny has to take care of itself." Merlin answered at last.

Arthur grinned. A month later, he married Gemma, with Merlin and the squadron by his side. Arthur finally had the normal life he'd always dreamed of. Well, semi-normal, since it involved a transition to a peace-time military, and later a career in the House of Commons and a knighthood. Not to mention four beautiful, strong-willed children.

At eighty years of age, Arthur died, and Merlin mourned. He felt lost, but less so than he ever had before after any of Arthur's earlier deaths, because Arthur had not only fulfilled his destiny. Merlin's best friend had also finally gotten to live the life he'd always longed to have.

And Merlin? Well, he became the un-aging, unchanging "Uncle Merlin" to many generations of Arthur's children and grandchildren. Until one day, a great granddaughter of Arthur's, who was also a descendant of Morgana's third son, decided to marry Merlin. There was no dissuading her. She was as stubborn as Arthur and as enduring as Gwen. With her dark hair, pale skin, and dark eyes, she looked a bit like Feya, and she loved Merlin with all her heart. Merlin himself felt like an idiot. He was falling in love with her, but she was so very much younger than he was. And he didn't know how to be in love, not really. He'd never given his whole heart to anyone since Freya, not even Morgana, and it had been centuries since his last affair.

It was that generation's family patriarch, a Thomas Arthur King - called Tom for short- who gave Merlin the needed push to give into love and happiness. Tom gave Merlin a packet of letters, letters that Arthur had written during the last few decades of his life, in hopes that someday his old friend would finally have the chance to have a life of his own.

There was a letter for falling in love, which was the first one that Tom gave to Merlin. There was a letter for his engagement, and a letter for his wedding. Another for the birth of his first child, and for his son's first birthday. Sadly, Merlin's children were still young when Merlin died, so he never got to read the letters which Arthur had written him for when his children came of age and got married themselves, or for when he became a grandfather for the first, second, etc. times.

It was a car accident. Merlin hadn't been wearing his seatbelt, and the roads had been wet. He'd still managed to swerve the car so that his wife and youngest child survived the crash, but Merlin himself had died instantly when a shard of glass from the windshield ran through his heart.

Arthur's family took care of Merlin's children as faithfully as Merlin had cared for them - and some day in the distant future, descendants of Merlin's and Arthur's blood would once again save the world.

It wasn't the ending that Merlin had dreamed about, when first he arrived wide-eyed and innocent from Ealdor to hear the Dragon's tale. But all in all, it was a fairly good one. And it had only taken ten times, to get it 'right.'

10


End file.
